A while back (March 25th to be exact!) we presented a truly awful track from this rip-off superhero album by The Capes & Masks. It was a wretched pastiche of the fantastic wedding of Sue and Reed that included random explosion sound effects and made little or no sense. Bad record. Bad. Bad.

But now we present, from the very same bogus, low-budget album, one of the greatest tracks in all of comicdom. The most mind-expanding comic-oriented record I’ve ever heard. It’s the “Pet Sounds” of rip-off records. The “Sgt. Pepper” of bargain-bin music. I give you, “The Eagle’s Code.” Just listen and tell me this isn’t one of the most creative and wonderful recordings you’ve ever heard in the 99-cent rack.

Kudos to Mr. Capes and Mr. Masks for producing a rip-off record so ahead of its time!

7 Responses to “D. J. David B. Spins Comics-Tunes: The Eagle’s Code”

I think at least some members of the Capes & Masks had taken lessons by the time this was recorded, and I think they had started to recognize that it’s hard to make a living as a professional musician.

I especially like the intro, where they’re playing with the tape recorder and mixing stuff from their sound-effects records. I don’t think the engineer had learned how to rewind yet.

I’ve had this album for almost 40 years, but don’t think I ever listened to it all the way through. But even when I was 8, I noticed that just about all the cover illustrations were swiped from Jules Feiffer’s “The Great Comic Book Heroes.”

I remember eyeing this album as a child, instead always going for something else (with an actual name like ‘Batman’ on the cover, for instance). It IS a good track (once you get past the the reject sound effects) though it sounds like it was composed and arranged by those mysterious people who did Movie and Sporting Event intro’s (“TONIGHT on the LATE SHOW, James Colburn and Gila Golan STAR in ‘Our Man Flint’”…. Music playing in the background)

Then there’s that snippet of “eefin’” with the “one, two buckle my shoe” business, which makes no sense appended to the fairly competant orchestral piece. Leave it to the Capes & Masks to come up with such a bizarre mix!

Since posting this I’ve learned a lot more about it. It’s actually side one that’s by Shorty Rogers, probably tracks that were re-purposed from some previous session. Side two is by Irving Joseph, borrowed from his non-soundtrack to the film “Murder, Inc.” If you pick up a copy of that album you can listen to all the same music but with titles that sound like crime novels instead of James Bond/comic book cliches.